I see you rolling your eyes, nodding your head and saying, “Well, do Januaries roll into April?” Probably making a side note as to how the unhinging need not have happened so soon and so on. But as I stepped out on a walk, that is exactly how I felt. Cherry blossoms that usually start peeking out in March and filling out with beautiful scented flowers in April already seem to be scenting the beautiful air. After a brief spell of rain in December, the clouds have moved on, leaving behind green hills and cherry blossoms in January. The days have a magical quality about them that makes staying indoors seem like a shame.
Cherry Blossoms already?
You can, therefore, understand my wanting to utilize the gorgeous day over the week-end to step outside and go to the park with the family. I huffed and I puffed, but the family, behaved like reluctant groundhogs and burrowed themselves deeper into the earth and refused. Imagine my surprise the next day to see that in a fit of gallant enthusiasm, the husband and daughter had prepared a picnic lunch and had it packed and ready. I could have swooned if a passing sofa had not lent me its sturdy support.
After the picnic, we took a short walk by a pine and eucalyptus tree lined path. We stopped to peer down at the marvelous surroundings when a biker told us all about some prehistoric rocks that we could find if we kept going.
Can I see dinosaurs?
“I can see dinosaur?” asked the breathless toddler all-a-twitter, whose curriculum now includes dinosaurs. Ihated to break it to the fellow that he was a few million years late at chancing upon dinosaurs, but we settled down to see a groundhog instead.
Anything that requires stopping and peering down at something is always a huge hit with the son, who will willingly stop at every daisy or squirrel. So, the groundhog really was a bonus, though a bit of a step down from a dinosaur. To see a groundhog on Groundhog day was exciting.( Shh! It might have been a mole. I am not the best at distinguishing species.)
I also read this article that said that in earlier times, Groundhog Day was not simply a day to welcome Spring, but also to eat groundhogs.
T’was the end of the Christmas holiday, or if you prefer the politically correct version: T’was the end of the Holiday Season holiday , and the family was quietly going about the business of getting back to business. That is, we yelled across staircases for missing tiffin boxes, wondered aloud why things that were to be done during the luxurious break were still undone, books landed with a thump on the stairs, socks pushed under the sofa were retrieved and shoes frantically scoured the home for their partners. Folks wandering past the home may have been pardoned for thinking there was a nursery inside, but there! It was a typical end-of-vacation-day.
I opened the daughter’s backpack, put my hand in and let out a strangled yelp. I may have heard snapping inside, but I also felt like I was holding a fur ball. Judging by the smell, it could have been a marmalade-smeared rat or an orange-scented skunk. I felt around a bit more and there was another such monster.There was nothing to be done. I bit down the nausea brought on by eating too many cookies, remembered the brave deeds of my father while tackling rats in our childhood home, squared my shoulders for the onslaught and plunged my hand in with a grim determination to retrieve whatever monster the bag held.
There was no cat or rat to let out of the bag. It was just a couple of sad looking oranges that had long ago passed its ‘Best by’ date. Judging by the fungi on it, it may be long past the ‘Fling without spattering’ date as well. I moaned a sound that started out as ‘Ugh’, pitched up to a holler of her complete name, and squeaked down at ‘please’.
The School Bag
“Let’s clean it up.” I said becoming the stern taskmaster.We trooped up the stairs with the foul smelling bag and its 100 pound contents. I kid you not, that bag weighs about 100 pounds – I don’t know what is in there, for every child I see pulls this mini-suitcase-like bag along bursting at its seams with books it seems, and yet when it is time to buckle down to a piece of homework or an assignment, I see a fair bit of telephoning and neighbor hopping to ‘see if my friend has the book to finish the assignment’ happening. Sigh.
It was a good few minutes later, and the techniques of deep breathing successfully applied gave me the glowing answer. I let her deal with the bag with the able assistance of her father. There was still some bag-related noise upstairs, but it had mellowed to a gurgle with occasional spurts of “But Appa! I need that. It is for Moon-city.” (their play patch is christened something-city)This dash-city is home to some willow trees and a large grass patch. Lodged in blah-city is a variety of treasures ranging from pine cones to balls made of pencil shavings. (I have a series of blogs on pencil shavings that will make entertaining reading when I sit down to writing about it).It looked like a large layer of the general debris in the schoolbag was for Sun-city.
I like these glimpses into her childhood that I get. I hope this is the kind of thing that she will throw her mind back to when she thinks of her childhood. As a child I was best amused when left to my own devices and swinging on a tree trunk still tickles the endorphins in me. I agree with Bertrand Russell when he says that “The pleasures of childhood should in the main be such as the child extracts from his environment by means of some effort and inventiveness.”
Anyway, back to the bag. Judging by the level of debris in her bag, she may be one of the most creative persons I know. For there is this study that says folks with the messiest desks are the most creative.
The day was cloudy and cold as I stepped out for a walk. As I neared a spot where there are wide grasslands, I paused here and there to see two warblers, an American robin, a goldfinch, sparrows, and blue-colored scrub jays. It was as I was panting near what I thought was a red-breasted robin that it struck me, as to how much biophony has reduced in the areas of our habitat. I am no ornithologist. In fact, I am a bird who is seldom right about birds – for all you know I may have been watching two sparrows, a bunch of bullfinches, some doves and a bluejays. You see, birdwatching is a hobby that requires patience, and I start to hum before I am properly stationed with the binocs. That would hardly do to the elusive birds waiting for peace and quiet before emerging from the bushes and so on. No sir. You would not find me waiting with a pair of binoculars behind any tree for the life of me. That kind of joy requires patience and I know best of all, that I am as restless as a hummingbird. Despite this, I love watching birds when they are not shy enough to stray across my path. I love their peckings and their cooings and their general sense of industry.
Birds
I listened to the bird calls for a few minutes and thought about how much I miss the sounds of birds. The only sounds we hear often is the Angry Birds background music that is both irritating and jarring from some multi-media entertainment channel. We have truly substituted cacophony for biophony. What is biophony? A word I was interested to learn about as I listened to this recording of noises in a California forest over the past 10 years.
It has happened so gradually that many are oblivious to the change, and now happily go on with their lives. Save for a pang now and again, we don’t set aside another thought to the missing birds in our life.
In other news, I read recently that children exposed to inordinate amounts of screen time are less tuned to reading people’s emotions and acting accordingly. Apparently, they miss subtle body language and facial clues, and blunder on to make things worse.
If we ever need to get a peek into what society will be like when that transformation happens completely, all one needs to do is seat themselves in front of any appalling soap opera on Indian Television. The maudlin entertainment pulled my attention when the parents or parents-in-law were here several times. There the heroine is:impeccably groomed, dressed like she is going for a party, to receive her abusive husband or to confront angry relatives or something-that-will-ensure-she-cries-buckets-in-minutes. But there is something else here for us to observe. She babbles on completely ignoring the cues that are emanating from the person she is conversing with. There is nothing but brooding silence, or desperately angry vibes that are coming from the other person. Of course, no good can come from this, and pretty soon, everything thuds to a stop with an explosion of sorts. (The same thing could have happened with a man, but Indian TV prefers crying women.) The glycerine acts immediately and there are tears and dubious sentiments on culture and I gag (once again) in the confines of my home.
This saddens me. Is this not what society is headed for if we lose the ability to study the subtle hints that body language gives us? I truly can’t think of a bleaker future than one where we regress to live like folks in Tamil TV serials. If you had told me that we would have to adopt the babboon-way-of-life again, I would have been less sad, for we might have evolved into humans once again.
The problem is that, it will be a slow process, one in which one generation of parents finds a subtle change in their offspring and another change in the generation after that. We may, in the meanwhile, categorize these mystifying changes to a generation gap and only realize three generations later when a great grandparent talks about a time when he used a subtle cue to decipher a situation.
Just like we cannot bring the biophony back, what if we cannot bring one of our most useful social skills back?
The house sat there in the cold with its heater shivering and sputtering. A house on the banks of a large lake in the Winter is bound to be cold and forbearing. The backyard had an iron wicket gate that opened onto a wooden pier jutting into the lake. There, on the pier, were some wooden chairs, and a rickety swing. Out on the waters, a hundred mallards quaked and quacked, finding their voices. It was in this setting that the woman sat sipping tea contemplating life. Her thoughts were flitting, meditatively, she thought. One minute she sat thinking of mallards, the next, the temperature of the water. Even the sun’s rays were cold, but bright. The Dal Lake is supposed to be as beautiful. Could Jahannara and Shah Jahan and all those Moghul emperors have enjoyed the beauty of the lake, with a thousand servants to do their bidding and an army waiting at close quarters? Could they have felt inconspicuous when presented with nature’s beauty?
Maybe the true test of one’s ego is how we react to Nature.
The woman looked around her once more, and noticed a furious scurrying in the house. The house had an attache. One had to step outside and scurry a few steps to make it to the attache. The woman saw a young boy running across with a large pile of bed linen. One of the sheets were scraping along on the floor behind him. The woman’s instinct was to let the boy know, but that would mean screaming and shattering the pervading peace of the surroundings. What if the sheets are a bit filthy, she thought uncharitably. If she had stepped out for a few minutes to contemplate life, why not use the opportunity to do just that?
A few seconds later, a young girl emerged dragging a larger pile of bed linen behind her and ran across the same patch. The woman had seen enough of human scurryings and went back to observing the docked boats and the many forms of life the lake housed. While this beautiful Earth struggles with a myriad different things, what do different lifeforms struggle with?
It was a few minutes before she glanced back at the house.What greeted her was the boy scurrying from the attache to the main house with a huger pile of linen dragging behind him. A few minutes later, a young girl came dragging bedspreads, comforters and pillow cases behind her. Why was all the bedding being shifted from A to B and then again from B to A? Behind the young girl, trooped a large pretty dog vigorously wagging his tail. Had she seen the dog close-up, she could have detected the sense of purpose that he too was helping in the linen shifting. She had often seen this to be the case with dogs close to children. Their work seems important and by association so are they.
Was that how we viewed ourselves? And just like that, her mind started thinking of mankind and its search for meaningful work. How would one feel if their work was not impactful in any direct way? What if the continuous evolving nature of the world leaves people behind, or merely slows them down? A recent book she’d read, The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, took up this very question and analyzed it from the viewpoint of a butler. A butler, whose career had been in the service industry, serving his Lord that he trusted implicitly. When during the course of his lifetime, butlers were no longer needed, what happens to him? A moving question that everyone needs to think about.
In what ways do we define our work and how do we derive importance from our work? Is being completely attached a good thing, any more than being partially detached is?The ability to question ourselves and reflect, coupled with strong doses of work is what keeps mankind evolving. It is also what makes us stand up for who we are, in small ways and big. Every little moral stream presents us with the choice of steering clear, dipping our toes, swimming in, jumping across or flying across.
Such were the questions buzzing in her butterfly brain as she went back towards the house. Maybe there was work to do with moving the beds out.
As the year 2014 comes to a close, it is as if everybody suddenly became a Chartered Accountant and tapped the year-end nooks of their brains to peer through their books and publish them with a profitable turn. WordPress sent me statistics, in which they are trying their best to make my poor blog look popular. I know my blog’s standing – it is not one of those sites that gets a 10,000 hits every time a post is out there, but it is wonderful to see the things WordPress’s algorithm says to make me feel good. Did you know that the total number of people who came to your blog could have filled Sidney’s Opera House upper balcony? Imagine that. Or did you know that if an octopus read your blog, and used a Squid’s ink to write, there would be fifty jellyfish on your blog right now? (Of course, I made those up, but you get the gist.)
When I look back, I am happy that we got 4 books out in the past year along with enjoying the pace of life and navigating its many turns, slides and ladders. It is like playing a game of Chutes and Ladders that the son is into playing these days.
This is also my 500th post and I managed to post 52 posts this past year – that is about a post a week!
Halloween, Mother’s Day, Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day In The Jungle
Then, of course, Google Plus and Facebook came up with their own versions of the year-in-review with the best pictures of the year. Facebook got in trouble for picking the pictures with the most number of likes and it ticked off some folks whose pictures of sad events had gotten the most likes.
All this is fine when it comes to relive the best memories of your year. But when it comes to reviewing a year in my mind, I find I like to look at the ups and downs together, for that is how life is. We don’t always publicly share our troubles, and we don’t want to look back and relive those times. We find that we relish developing and nurturing our many relationships, friendships, put our mind and efforts into doing a good job at what we undertake. But it all goes into making us who we are and strengthening us from within.
Here is wishing all of you a wonderful year in 2015. May it be filled with the essence of life, joy, good health, happiness and lots of laughter.
I rarely save the works of art that my children produce. For one, there are so many, and for another, while some of them are hilarious, they are no masterpieces (yet! – I read somewhere that good parents don’t say things like this and always leave the doors open for whatever the future might bring. If the future springs the brilliant artist, I don’t want to be the lousy mother thwarting the Sotheby’s auction, do I?) So, I have no way of comparing the drawings of the six year old daughter to see what hidden psychological messages were in there. According to this news article, deciphering a six year old’s drawings can give us remarkable insight into their minds.
I tried analyzing the work of the 3 year old son, and I could make out nothing. He asked me to guess what the picture he was holding up was, and I told him it looked like a very shiny pig or a jellyfish. He cackled loudly and said that he tried to make a pink christmas tree. I don’t mind tapping Freud from his grave and asking him to interpret that, but I am pretty sure, he’d choose to remain dead.
This is my drawing of course, because I did not save the original one – but you get the gist.
Anyway, this brought an interesting question to mind. What if I interpreted my own drawings? I had in a recent drawing placed a house on a dog’s tail (which was kindly brought to my attention by a reader later on)
See house on dog’s tail?
What would that mean in the light of the latest letter to Santa? The daughter had asked for a dog. She very well knows there is no Santa for the past few years at least, but just plays along to see what she can get.
Regular readers of the blog know that the request for a dog in the household rears its head every now and then. It is usually silenced by me (a trifle vehemently at times) or in a more wishy-washy sort of manner by the husband, who then looks sorry when confronted by me on what he meant by saying, “Maybe we will think about one in a few month’s time.”
“How many months?” asks the daughter expectantly
“What do you mean by months?” I say pushing a couple of daggers out of my eye sockets, and the husband scurries for safety.
Hitherto while asking for a dog, she had relied on techniques such as “You don’t have to do anything. We will look after the dog.”(By saying ‘we’, she includes the toddler brother who stands around nodding enthusiastically without having the least idea as to what it takes to have a dog in the household. The few occasions he has been in the presence of one has been spent like a monkey on a tree with a lion prowling down below) The matter gained traction again a few months ago and I wondered where the renewed vigor was coming from. Now, I was getting the old oil, “Oh! Don’t you miss not having someone to cuddle up with, now that we are all grown-up? Hey! You know what might help? A dog!”
It was only when I went to talk to her teacher a few weeks ago that the mystery was unraveled. Her teacher had told them how to form a convincing case, say, on how to get a dog, and she assures us that she had never held a class in such rapturous attention. Apparently, she had told them to come up with points that will help their cause, for example: come up with what the other party will gain out of the proposition. The daughter, having racked her brains, could easily see how I would poke holes in the We-will-look-after-dog theory, and went in for the psychological wringing.
Well, I was not buying it (yet). Let me explain why. There are some images that cannot be easily wiped from one’s brain. Two vicious specimens come to mind. Both of them were not more than 5 inches in height, long and had tempers like vipers about to be curdled in whatever-vipers-are-curdled-in and bites like adders. To their considerable repertoire of talents was the fact that they could smell like hounds ( which they were), and ornamental nose though I had, it was completely useless in detecting dogs hidden behind bushes. The results had been extremely disturbing. A physical education teacher of mine, once saw me leg it up 67 stairs at one go in the pouring rain and opined that the best way to train me for the forthcoming Athletics Championships was to set a couple of dogs after me. Not pleasant I tell you. Not pleasant.
Now, I know that dogs in the United States are extremely docile beings and rarely bite. But I am not sure I can move past the canine horrors of my past and embrace a dog in the household.
More than any of that,I am not sure I need another living being to look after, I have 4 large fir trees, 3 fishes, 2 children, 1 husband, 1 apricot tree , 1 cherry tree, many plants to nurture and often have visiting parents. Maybe the Myth of Santa has to be officially busted this year, I thought to myself and peered at the letter below the tree and saw amendments.
There, in brackets it said: (I know my mom will not like a dog, so can I have some king doh if not a dog?)
I like this pragmatism even though she is lost in the clouds of her imagination, an imagination liberally spotted with unicorns and dogs sometimes. (I found an interesting word that means just that by the way – Nefelibata)
I bowled along as usual trying to catch my commuter train. My bag was flung behind me with a velocity that can knock rhinos off their feet, my car beeped hurriedly as I locked it and I charged as fast as the recently rain-soaked streets would allow me to. Why I don’t leave just 2 minutes earlier is a lingering soul-searching question. There are days when there is a game and the trains are crowded, but these are mostly during the evening commute, not mornings. But this morning was different. People were milling around the station first thing in the morning. All of them were dressed in Orange and Black, like they belonged to some sort of Halloween fraternity. Closer observation, however, revealed that they were devoted followers of the SF Giants team and that team, having won the game, was having a victory parade that day to which all the enthusiastic fans were going. I could have checked the news before leaving I suppose, but that would have made me charge for the next train not this one.
I squeezed myself onto the train, and hoped for the best. What I was not ready for, was for folks to glare at me just because I was not dressed in Orange & Black. I was wearing a pretty royal blue and black skirt and I admit I could have been more warmly dressed for it was a rainy sort of day. (I could also have checked the weather before starting. ) But I still did not think that people would be so worried about my feeling cold. I mean, their concern was touching and a trifle disconcerting. Freedom of dress and all that, what?(I suppose that is not a fundamental freedom, but it felt like it was worth tacking one on, on that long train ride) There was a guy who looked at me and pointedly yelled, “Giants Rule!” to great back-thumping and cheer. I smiled ruefully and looked down avoiding all eye-contact. (Avoiding eye contact is another art you master over the years of traveling with a wide variety of co-passengers : some dotty, some dodgy, some rude, some out to make an ass of you, but mostly ordinary folk like myself that no one wants to bother with.)
I was glad to get off at my station, only to be met with more stares as I walked down the crowded streets towards my office. The rain was coming down pretty heavily and I was enjoying the raindrops and trying to navigate the crowds. The parade was to pass through the main street artery of the city and people were spilling out of liquor stores and doughnut shops. The combination of excess sugar and liquor on a rainy morning was a bit too much to contemplate. I was glad to enter my office and look down safely on the crowds from the window. That was atmosphere enough for me.I checked the news on arrival and found that I had missed a triple hat draw: It was the SF giants parade, Halloween and Critical Mass (which means all cyclists take to the streets and blow traffic flows to the wind from their rooftops). Combine all three events together to imagine the traffic snarls and train crowds.
Various reports jostled at me : The local school authorities had requested folks to attend school that day instead of the Giants Parade. Another report said that it was to be an alcohol-free day. I grinned and sneaked a peek at the street below. It was 9:00 in the morning and the liquor store across the street looked like a very busy place! A number of children, evidently of school-age had not listened to the school authorities pleas and were looking happy and excited too. The sea of Orange & Black was like watching a large, mutating cloud. Strangely exciting and slightly unnerving.
It was only when I touched upon the topic of dress with a colleague that he enlightened me on the stares. Apparently, I was dressed in the colors of the opposing team that the Giants had battled so valiantly to win against. As if the weather gods were not doing it enough, I had rained on their parade. The staunch supporters of the Orange & Black Giants team,who braved the colds and rain, probably thought it was excessively rude of me to flaunt the opposing teams colors on their faces. Sigh. I can only thank my stars that people were nice enough to not do anything more than glare at me. Still, it seemed prudent to cover up with a jacket on the ride back home! One can never be sure of the effects of a day full of alcohol, rain and sugar, can we?
Did you know November 1st is Saints Day? With Halloween around the corner, I thought it might be fun to see how the word evolved. So, here goes:
November 1st is All Saints Day
Therefore, October 31st is All Saints Eve
October 31st is All Hallows Eve (‘Hallow’ also means to make holy or respect greatly and hence, synonymous with Saints)
October 31st is All Hallows Even (It is the evening after all)
When you try to say ‘Happy All Hallows Even’ about 30 times in 2 minutes, you get at ‘Happy Halloween’. (I suggest you try the exercise in private.)
All this is fine so far, but if you are unsure as to how All Saints Day got associated with ghosts, ghouls, spirits and ugly decor, please check out this news item that walks you through the progression of Halloween over the centuries.
In the meanwhile, two diabolically different worlds are coming together in the household this year for Halloween. A perfectly poised Hermione Granger (replete with the fake British accent) from the Harry Potter Universe will boss around 3 year old Lightning McQueen. Uncharacteristically, for Lightning McQueen, he will listen humbly and follow unquestioningly all the directions that Hermione sets forth for him. So what if the Harry Potter Universe is still using floating candles and speaking Latin, while Lightning McQueen is off touring the world and racing big-time? Who said there should be no collision between fictional worlds?
Speaking of fictional worlds, it is time for us to peek into that lovely forest with all the animals to see what they are doing to celebrate Halloween. Halloween In The Jungle is now available in the iBook store. Tango Tiger, Oby Elephant, Biso Bison, Percy Parrot, Zebo Zebra and many more join in this adventure to make Halloween a success in the Jungle. Please grab a copy, and listen to the story while sipping some pumpkin juice from Farmer Hasalot’s pumpkin patch.
The Jungle is a busy place with Halloween approaching, eerie orchestra sounds, pumpkin juice and lemonade stalls, spiders at work. You must feel just a little bit compelled to chip in, right?
The Jungle is a busy place preparing for the Halloween Party
Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom The internet has been agog with the fact that sitting is killing us. We were meant to be standing up and we are changing something fundamental when we move towards sitting this long. Of course, I have been reading all this sitting smugly on my chair, sipping tea and resolve to fix it immediately. How, one may ask, but I could not answer for I do not know.
There is a very sensible article that seemed to tell me exactly how to repeal all the horrible effects of sitting. Apparently, if I gave myself 3 small walks for every 3 hours of sitting, I could reverse the appalling effects of sitting. Though how I can throw in a dozen small walks a day is beyond me.
On another note, the son has been accessorized with a pair of shoes that light up. The sister of his came up with ridiculous arguments for the shoes:
He needed the light-up shoes because when he walks at night, the lights from the shoes can light the way.
It saves electricity because when he wear those shoes, there is no need for any lights in the room: This coming from a child who leaves a light bulb trail wherever she goes in the house, and I yelp behind her switching off every single light on the way. I, to prove a point of course, switch off lights in rooms before I have made it to the door and bang up against something unceremoniously only to have a cackling I-told-you-so afterward from the daughter. but it is all in a day’s work and I bear my grievances with fortitude.
If he is walking in a forest and the sunlight does not come through, he can help us out with his shoes.
The last reason may have been the reason I caved in. One never knows when one can get stuck in a forest where the sunlight does not reach the floor right? It turns out that he got to walk in a forest within a week or two of his new shoes. To give the little one his due, he walked and ran for miles on end in the forest. The novelty of the light-up-shoes coupled with a serene forest atmosphere no doubt.But he did seem to emanate the ‘Miles to go before I sleep’ aura about him.
Maybe, I too shall get myself a pair like that and then parade up and down throwing in a dozen walks or more a day. In search of the light.
The son walked into his new preschool talking like a man in control of his emotions. He yapped and clacked nervously telling us all what he can do in the school. His doting elder sister had told him of all the fun things that a school provides – friends, play areas, play doh, blocks, story time, circle time, the works. There was no denying the fact that he was excited. The poor fellow asked us repeatedly whether we will be coming to school with him. I assured him that on the first day, we would. We will walk him to his chair and then say ‘Bye’ and leave. He was not very happy with that, but I told him that the school was only for children and therefore, we would leave. His face fell a bit, but not much. I swelled with pride that my little boy was being a brave boy after all. He chatted happily as we made our way into the school classroom, we settled him in and turned to leave. It was only then that he realized that his sister was not going to be with him in class either, and she would leave too. He started to cry: silent, heaving sobs clinging on to his sister’s hands. He thought that when I said school was for children I meant his sister and he could stay.
Long story short, the fellow started preschool this week, and brought home his first piece of “work”.The work is (un)helpfully labelled ‘I can draw a Circle’. In my opinion, they need not have done that. Because they said ‘Circle’ I was forced to look for one in the doodle that my son produced, and it was a daunting task.
ICanDrawCircle
A word about his lineage might be appropriate here. The son is the grandson of two Maths teachers, and when asked to draw a circle, he sees whether can he draw two and two square and two cube circles. He experiments with Venn diagrams. He experiments with non-linear curves without curvature. He tests the hyperbolic strength of a loosely held pencil. Or he just doesn’t know what a circle is and produces the hapless picture above.
The d.sister took it and stuck it up on the wall proudly as his first art work. All fine so far. That is what a family does. They save the embarrassing first works of Art to show it to them when they unleash their creative works on you later in life as adults and show them the long path they have traversed and then smile proudly. What I was not prepared for was this.
Apparently, this study studies the first art work of children and then produces a moderate correlation to their abilities as teens. Luckily the article is as vague and under-researched and steers off clarity as a lot of articles on the Internet, and I am assured that the first piece of Art is nothing more than that. A Doodle.
Nourish-n-Cherish 
